Tag Archives: Trump

What will it take?

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“The baneful effect of evil associates is less seen than felt. The inoculation of evil human thoughts ought to be understood and guarded against. The first impression, made on a mind which is  attracted or repelled according to personal merit or demerit, is a good detective of individual character. Certain minds meet only to separate through simultaneous repulsion. They are enemies without the preliminary offence. The impure are at peace with the impure.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Have I ever changed my mind about a politician? Oh yeah. I’ve never had a problem with switching from one candidate to another as my thoughts evolve. Two cases come immediately to mind:
– I voted for Reagan in 1980. By 1984 – after I’d witnessed him fire all the air traffic controllers, break up workers’ unions, sell weapons to Iran, take money from social security, support Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein – I no longer supported him, and voted for the other guy.
– I voted for Clinton in 1992, but by 1996 my inner BS detector was beeping – and I voted for Ralph Nader instead.

I have never really been one of those people who gets attached to personalities. I tend to follow causes – not people. I tend to vote for candidates who share the same values as me (championing the poor and disenfranchised, working to clean up our environment, fighting for social justice and equality) – rather than showboat egomaniacs surrounded in glitz and gold.

And maybe that’s why it’s really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that there are still people in my country who are blindly loyal to a politician who has – from what I’ve seen – shown no glimmer of genuine kindness or generosity or honesty since he’s been in office. A politician who oversaw more than 2000 children being separated from their families. A politician whose longtime lawyer has admitted that he was directed by the politician to pay hush money to at least two women to keep them from talking about their affairs with the politician . A politician whose campaign manager was just convicted of eight major financial crimes. A politician who is methodically dismantling the environmental regulations that protect our air and water.

How anyone can justify or rationalize any of this is beyond me. How anyone can spin any of what this politician has done into something good is a mystery. What will it take for his followers to finally say they’ve seen enough?

“Christian Scientists should beware of unseen snares, and adhere to the divine Principle and rules for demonstration. They must guard against the deification of finite personality.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings

I’d like to ignore Trump, too.

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There are times when I just don’t want to invest even one more minute of my precious time on earth thinking about Trump. He’s an attention-grabber – and there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to give him what he wants. And sometimes that part of me wins out and I go have my adventures and deliberately, consciously ignore anything Trump. This is how I dealt with him (and other reality stars) before he decided to run for President. I wanted nothing to do with him. He wasn’t any part of my reality. He couldn’t affect my life in any way. But it’s different now, of course. Now he can affect my life and the lives of the people I work with, teach, care about. And so… yeah… as much as I’d like to just ignore him… sometimes I feel an urgent need to address “it.” I hope my posts don’t cause you too much distress. I totally get why you’d rather not read anything about this man. Please don’t ever feel obligated to read my Trump-stuff. I don’t blame you at all for wanting to avoid it. But please don’t blame me for following my conscience on this.

“It is difficult for the sinner to accept divine Science, because Science exposes his nothingness; but the sooner error is reduced to its native nothingness, the sooner man’s great reality will appear and his genuine being will be understood.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

“Ignorance, subtlety, or false charity does not forever conceal error; evil will in time disclose and punish itself.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

“A sinner is not reformed merely by assuring him that he cannot be a sinner because there is no sin. To put down the claim of sin,  you must detect it, remove the mask, point out the illusion, and thus get the victory over sin and so prove its unreality… A sinner is afraid to cast the first stone. He may say, as a subterfuge, that evil is unreal, but to know it, he must demonstrate his statement. To assume that there are no claims of evil and yet to indulge them, is a moral offence. Blindness and self-righteousness cling fast to iniquity.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

 

 

 

To my friends who voted for Mr. Trump –

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To my friends who voted for Mr. Trump –

Okay, I’ll accept that you thought you were doing the best you could given your choices. You voted – and good for you for taking the time to do that. I wish Bernie had been on the ballot – but Wasserman Schultz denied us that choice – so I did the best I could, too, and voted for Clinton.

But Trump has been in office a year and a half now. And – after all we’ve seen since he became President – I have to admit I’m finding it impossible to understand those people who STILL support the man in the White House.

A recap (feel free to add on) –
– Trump fired FBI director James Comey, attacked our own U.S. intelligence community, and sided with Putin.

– The number and visibility of hate groups has grown under Trump. (USA Today, 2-22-18) He has made no effort to condemn these groups. He has, however, tweeted that NFL players who use their First Amendment rights to kneel during the anthem should lose their jobs. When a U.S. President is sworn into office he takes a pledge to protect our Constitution. When a President dishonors our First Amendment rights, he dishonors the Constitution he’s supposed to protect.

– Someone is going to have to pay for the tax cuts that Trump signed into law, and that were given to corporations and the wealthy. “Republican leaders in Congress have suggested they will turn to cutting welfare and programs such as Medicare and Medicaid once a tax bill is complete.” (Tax Policy Center)

– The Trump Administration separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the border. In the process, they lost track of 1475 immigrant children and 38 parents of young children. (And no, there was no law that said Trump had to do this. He chose to do this.)

– The Trump administration pulled the U.S. from the Paris Agreement (an agreement of the global community to combat climate change) and a former coal lobbyist (Andrew Wheeler) is now in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump killed a rule restricting the dumping of coal waste into our waterways. The administration also started a rollback of clean car standards (car emissions standards). Researchers from Harvard predict an additional 80,000 people could die in the next decade because of the Trump administration’s environmental policies. (“How Trump is Changing the Environment”; National Geographic)

– The Trump administration legalized the inhumane practice of hunting hibernating bears and their cubs, and shooting wolf pups in their dens. The Trump administration also legalized the trade of elephants parts in the United States.

– With the exception of Putin (and maybe Kim Jong un), Trump has not treated other world leaders with courtesy or respect. He has shouldered them out of the way, walked in front of them, and given handshakes that are more like arm wrestling matches.

– He started a trade war that is already hurting our farmers and those in the solar power industry.

– And whenever Trump gets caught in one of his multitudinous lies he always uses the mainstream media as his scapegoat. Instead of respecting the people who have made a career of holding politicians accountable, he labels mainstream media “fake news” and seems to expect them to portray him in a positive light. It is not the job of mainstream media to portray ANY politician in a positive light.

To sum it all up, Trump is doing what he can to destroy our planet and destroy our democracy. How ANYone can support him now is incomprehensible to me.

The Job of Mainstream Media

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“When the press is gagged, liberty is besieged…”
– Mary Baker Eddy, founder of The Christian Science Monitor

It is not the job of mainstream media to present the President in a positive way. It is the job of mainstream media to report the facts, and it is the responsibility of the citizenry to stay informed of the facts. And sometimes none of that is any fun.

***

Here is a link to a survey about media on the Trump-Pence website that I found very interesting. I took the survey, but at the end it asked for my email and so forth and I didn’t want to share that stuff so I didn’t submit my answers. I’m sure y’all can guess how I answered the questions, though. 🙂 I suppose as you would find on any political website – Republican OR Democrat – the questions had built-in bias in them. That was not unexpected. For fun and mental stimulation, you might want to put on your critical thinking caps and look for the bias in the questions.

Here is how I answered a couple of the questions –

#18 Do you agree with President Trump’s strategy of communicating directly with his supporters through Twitter, email, and Facebook videos?
– Twittering your opinions into an echo chamber is not very presidential, no.

#26 What percentage do you believe is an accurate representation of President Trump’s positive news coverage by the mainstream media?
– Regarding the previous question (#26) I don’t think it is the job of mainstream media to represent Trump in a positive or a negative way. It is the job of mainstream media to report the facts.

“It is the pulpit and press, clerical robes and the prohibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of the world,—all unmitigated systems of crime; and it requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes. ”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings

fake news isn't

We Are a Most Peculiar People

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It is mind-boggling to me how the same country that put Obama in office just a short time ago has Trump sitting in the White House now. We are a most peculiar people.

That is all. Carry on then…

my country is killing people

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my country is killing people
separating parents from children
building walls to keep “them” out
and to keep “us” in
my country is killing people
in the streets because of the color
of their skin, their sexual orientation,
and their religion
my country is killing people
in their newspaper offices, churches,
at concerts, schools, and malls
because guns are more important
my country is killing people
in an economy that gives tax
cuts to the rich, and denies access
to health care for the poor
my country is killing people
as it kills the environment with coal
trains, fracking, oil pipelines, pesticides
and greed

and i am ashamed

– Karen Molenaar Terrell

Is this the best leader for our country?

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It is my belief that Jesus wouldn’t have approved of Trump’s direction for our country. Jesus told us to love our neighbors and love our enemies. He told us to feed the hungry, heal the sick, provide shelter for the homeless. Do you think he would have wanted to deny the poor access to health care? Do you think he would have wanted to deny refuge to our neighbors in Mexico, and across the sea, who need protection and shelter? Do you think he would have wanted tax cuts for the rich? He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” and he said it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. He said, “…whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant…” 

Do you think Trump sees himself as a servant?

We don’t have to hate Trump to recognize that he’s not fit to be the leader of the United States.

Trump 1

Distracting Distractions Swimming Everywhere

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Tweeting twooting twittering twits
sleazy sloppy squeeking soundbits
red herrings here and red herrings there
distracting distractions swimming everywhere

Awwk flag! Awwk anthem!
Awwk patriots! Awwk vets!
Parroting words to the masses
that it knows will get
their focus off Russia,
and tax breaks for the rich.

Tweeting twooting twittering twits
sleazy sloppy squeeking soundbits
red herrings here and red herrings there
distracting distractions swimming everywhere.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

Pop Quiz: A Patriot Is…

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Pop Quiz

An American patriot –
A) tries to take away laws that protect American citizens from discrimination.
B) insults people who practice their First Amendment rights.
C) tries to censor the news.
D) gets five deferments to avoid service to his country, and then says an actual Vietnam veteran is not a hero because he got captured.
E) None of the above.

patriot

A Few Observations

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I want to thank those of you who have crossed the political aisle over the last year or so and come over to shake my hand and introduce yourselves and your perspective on the world in a thoughtful and reasonable way. You are appreciated. I have learned from you. Some of you have become my friends.

And for those of you who have crossed the political aisle to tell me to “shut up” and to call me a *moron*, a *whiner*, a *libtard*, and a *snowflake* – I thank you, also. You, too, have been an education for me.

A few observations: Hurling insults and personal attacks at people rarely wins them over to our way of looking at things. It usually does just the opposite, in fact. Calling people “unproductive” and “lazy” – when we know nothing about their lives or work – is unlikely to persuade them to join our “team.” Telling them that the leader of our “team” has accomplished loads of great things – and then failing to provide a list of those accomplishments, or the sources for our information – is not very persuasive, either. We can’t,just make stuff up and then call it “facts.” And “fake” news isn’t just the news we don’t happen to like.

Alrighty then. Have a great rest of your day.
Peace.
– Karen

“We should remember that the world is wide; that there are a thousand million different human wills, opinions, ambitions, tastes, and loves; that each person has a different history, constitution, culture, character, from all the rest; that human life is the work, the play, the ceaseless action and reaction upon each other of these different atoms. Then, we should go forth into life with the smallest expectations, but with the largest patience; with a keen relish for and appreciation of everything beautiful, great, and good, but with a temper so genial that the friction of the world shall not wear upon our sensibilities; with an equanimity so settled that no passing breath nor accidental disturbance shall agitate or ruffle it; with a charity broad enough to cover the whole world’s evil, and sweet enough to neutralize what is bitter in it,—determined not to be offended when no wrong is meant, nor even when it is…”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings

 

earth NASA